Purpose

Material Witness will focus on extreme textile process. Images will be posted here showing the history of my work, new work, developing projects and inspiration.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Miners Rising

I, like many other people around the world, have watched the rescue of the Chilean Miners.They have been trapped in a mine for months and are emerging from the earth one at a time in a little capsule that is being dragged through a narrow tunnel. It is an extraordinary media spectacle.

Each man has a life on the surface away from the mine. Each has what we all have in terms of relationships and life chaos. Each must face the world again like a returning voyager.

Two things disturb me.

Why have we lost track of corporate responsibility for the disaster that has impacted the lives of these men and placed them in danger in the first place?

What happens to them when this is all over?

The media is covering this event as if it is a sports event. Not much different than how the Olympics were portrayed. A circus.

Miners die all over the world. They often work in terrible conditions. Many of them are children.Walls collapse, tunnels flood, gases poison, fire breaks out. It is not natural to send people deep into the earth like this.

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Profile

I am a textile artist living and working on Mayne Island on the West Coast of Canada.

I like using extreme methods while transforming cloth. That means ripping, tearing, burning, and rotting and using whatever method is needed to create eroded and complex surfaces.This includes using modern, traditional and ancient techniques to produce contemporary fabric art.

I also make sculpture, mixed media work, am a precision dyer and have worked for stage, film and television. Getting to teach workshops, sharing process and inspiration tickles my bones. None of us would know how to sew on a button without sharing skills.